en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trafalgar_Square
Trafalgar Square is a square in central London, England. With its position in the heart of London, it is a tourist attraction; and one of the most famous squares in the United Kingdom and the world. At its centre is Nelson's Column, which is guarded by four lion statues at its base. Statues and sculptures are on display in the square, including a fourth plinth displaying changing pieces of contemporary art, and it is a site of political demonstrations.
The name commemorates the Battle of Trafalgar (1805), a British naval victory of the Napoleonic Wars. The original name was to have been "King William the Fourth's Square", but George Ledwell Taylor suggested the name "Trafalgar Square".
The northern area of the square had been the site of the King's Mews since the time of Edward I, while the southern end was the original Charing Cross, where the Strand from the City met Whitehall, coming north from Westminster. As the midpoint between these twin cities, Charing Cross is to this day considered the heart of London, from which all distances are measured.
In the 1820s the Prince Regent engaged the landscape architect John Nash to redevelop the area. Nash cleared the square as part of his Charing Cross Improvement Scheme. The present architecture of the square is due to Sir Charles Barry and was completed in 1845.
Trafalgar Square ranks as the fourth most popular tourist attraction on earth with more than 15 million annual visitors.
The square consists of a large central area surrounded by roadways on three sides, and stairs leading to the National Gallery on the other. The roads which cross the square form part of the A4 road, and prior to 2003, the square was surrounded by a one-way traffic system. Underpasses attached to Charing Cross tube station allow pedestrians to avoid traffic. Recent works have reduced the width of the roads and closed the northern side of the square to traffic.
Nelson's Column is in the centre of the square, surrounded by fountains designed by Sir Edwin Lutyens in 1939 (replacing two earlier fountains of Peterhead granite, now at the Wascana Centre and Confederation Park in Canada) and four huge bronze lions sculpted by Sir Edwin Landseer; the metal used is said to have been recycled from the cannon of the French fleet. The column is topped by a statue of Horatio Nelson, the admiral who commanded the British Fleet at Trafalgar.
The fountains are memorials to Lord Jellicoe (western side) and Lord Beatty (eastern side), Jellicoe being the Senior Officer.[1]
On the north side of the square is the National Gallery and to its east St Martin-in-the-Fields church. The square adjoins The Mall via Admiralty Arch to the southwest. To the south is Whitehall, to the east Strand and South Africa House, to the north Charing Cross Road and on the west side Canada House.
At the corners of the square are four plinths; the two northern ones were intended for equestrian statues, and thus are wider than the two southern. Three of them hold statues: George IV (northeast, 1840s), Henry Havelock (southeast, 1861, by William Behnes), and Sir Charles James Napier (southwest, 1855). Former Mayor of London Ken Livingstone controversially expressed a desire to see the two generals replaced with statues "ordinary Londoners would know".[2]
On the lawn in front of the National Gallery are two statues, James II to the west of the entrance portico and George Washington to the east. The latter statue, a gift from the state of Virginia, stands on soil imported from the United States. This was done in order to honour Washington's declaration he would never again set foot on British soil.[3]
In 1888 the statue of General Charles George Gordon was erected. In 1943 the statue was removed and, in 1953, re-sited on the Victoria Embankment. A bust of the Second World War First Sea Lord Admiral Cunningham by Franta Belsky was unveiled in Trafalgar Square on 2 April 1967 by Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh.[4]
The square has become a social and political location for visitors and Londoners alike, developing over its history from "an esplanade peopled with figures of national heroes, into the country’s foremost place politique", as historian Rodney Mace has written. Its symbolic importance was demonstrated in 1940 when the Nazi SS developed secret plans to transfer Nelson's Column to Berlin following an expected German invasion, as related by Norman Longmate in If Britain Had Fallen (1972).
Fourth plinth
The fourth plinth on the northwest corner, designed by Sir Charles Barry and built in 1841,[5] was intended to hold an equestrian statue of William IV, but remained empty due to insufficient funds.[6] Later, agreement could not be reached over which monarch or military hero to place there.
In 1999, the Royal Society of Arts (RSA) conceived the Fourth Plinth Project, which temporarily occupied the plinth with a succession of works commissioned from three contemporary artists. These were:
•Mark Wallinger: Ecce Homo (1999) – Wallinger's Ecce Homo – the Latin title of which means "Behold the man", a reference to the words of Pontius Pilate at the trial of Jesus Christ (John 19:5) – was a life-sized figure of Christ, naked apart from a loin cloth, with his hands bound behind his back and wearing a crown of barbed wire (in allusion to the crown of thorns). Atop the huge plinth, designed for larger-than-life statuary, it looked minuscule. Some commentators said that, far from making the Man look insignificant, his apparent tininess drew the eye powerfully; they interpreted it as a commentary on human delusions of grandeur.[citation needed][7]
•Bill Woodrow: Regardless of History (2000)[8]
•Rachel Whiteread: Monument (2001) – Whiteread's Monument, by an artist already notable for her controversial Turner Prize-winning work House and the Judenplatz Holocaust Memorial in Vienna, was a cast of the plinth in transparent resin placed upside-down on top of the original.[9]
Companies have used the plinth (often without permission) as a platform for publicity stunts, including a model of David Beckham by Madame Tussauds during the 2002 FIFA World Cup.[5] The London-based American harmonica player Larry Adler jokingly suggested erecting a statue of Moby-Dick, which would then be called the "Plinth of Whales".[10] A television ident for the British TV station Channel 4 shows a CGI Channel 4 logo on top of the fourth plinth.[11]
The best use of the fourth plinth remains the subject of debate. On 24 March 2003 an appeal was launched by Wendy Woods, the widow of the anti-apartheid journalist Donald Woods, hoping to raise
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